Ubuntu Productivity

That new-band feeling

Using linux feels a lot like listening to an undiscovered band; it’s the new band none of my friends have listened to. When they first experience it they want it. I have it. I feel special. You know the story…

Huh? You haven’t heard this band?! Well, let me show you…their friends of mine. No, they’re not in the iTunes store…they released their album as a torrent. Never heard of a torrent?! Well…

Perhaps it’s the grass-roots community effort of it all. There is a very evangelistic aspect of running linux when everyone else is entrenched in their Mac OS or Windows. Everyone asks “why?” And the answer is usually intriguing enough to start some compelling conversation.

I have been wondering how linux creates that mystique and what advantage there might be in it. Most of the people I show it to have heard of linux, but they have never experienced it. I think there’s something in the experience that gives the initial impression extra impact (beyond simply reading about linux in a blog post.)

Behind-the-scenes revelation

My customers think that what I (and my co-workers and employees) do for them is amazing. We demystify the complex world of web-technologies, turning them into tools for their businesses, which means cash flow. So when they walk up to my desk and the veil is slowly pulled away, understanding dawns. All the goodness I deliver to them was created on the Ubuntu Linux OS, not the Mac OS. It turns the tables. Linux is no longer a geeks-only tech-toy. It’s the technology that, behind the scenes, gets things done.

Almost all of my customers have heard of “opensource” before, but it had no tangible meaning to them. When my customers realize what I deliver to them is built upon a foundation of free and open software they have a newfound respect for open-source software.

By experimenting with Linux as my daily os I have unexpectedly opened their eyes to the prowess of opensource.

That look…

I can see it in just about everyone’s face—that initial look. Everyone expects my shiny new iMac to sport Mac OS Leopard. Instead, the oddly familiar yet totally unexpected Gnome desktop appears. The windows wobble. Amazing things happen. They give me that weird look. Most everyone’s reaction goes as follows:

1. Awe

   “Oh-mi-gosh! What is that?”

2. Curiosity (in the negative)

   “Why would you do that to your Mac!? Wait a sec—how did you do that?”

3. Curiosity (in the positive)

   “Wha! Did that window just wobble?

   Your debugging in I.E. 6 without Windows!?!

   Free? What’s the catch?”

4. Reservation (as the excitement abates)

   “I use Adobe / Microsoft everyday, can it do that?

5. Eventually

   “When [insert statement about future] I am sooo gonna give linux a try…”

Conclusion

As an entrepreneur my entire adult life I understand what it takes to convince a business man or woman to invest in technology. Traditionally this is done through push-style marketing. Companies push their marketing in front of a person and hope to gain a brief moment of their attention. But linux has a severe advantage. It creates curiosity. Questions naturally flow from curiosity. This means pull-style marketing.

Linux is, in-and-of-itself, its best sales tool, because It creates curiosity. As I use Ubuntu Linux people are curious and they pull information from me. When I show a customer something that I created for them, and I did it on linux, they want to know more.

This is an important distinction. Linux does not need to push marketing material at people because potential customers are pulling the marketing material of their own free will. Linux has their attention. This means that if their questions are answered well they will invest.

I share all of this because I know that linux is largely promoted by the community of users and developers. There is no official marketing effort. Everything is a sort of hodge-podge of people, each “evangelizing” in their own way. This is good.

However there is a gap of sorts. It is very hard to find good data on the cost of adopting linux, or on the ROI of replacing Windows or Mac OS with linux. The top results on Google for “linux cost of adoption” are from 2000 – 2004. Hardly up-to-date. The whole reason I started this experiment was to answer my own questions because the answers were not to be found.

Not everyone is that adventurous. For linux to seriously take over the desktop in the small-business environment it needs to have some solid numbers behind it to convince the curious entrepreneur that it is indeed a viable option.